Was the radar able to automaticly set filter to Off to not loose target track above horizon?

[GumidekCZ]

Can be real APG-73 target lock fooled by notch above horizon?, when no clutter behind and radar in that upper hemisphere can simply switch filter automaticaly off.

[Bacab]

Actually this is a very good question. Because having the beam above the horizon is no guaranty there won't be any clutter IRL : their could be a mountain above the flying aircraft, returns from heavy cloud, ground returns from side lobes... And the radar has no mean to know if those conditions are met beforehand.

If the ground clutter filter is removed while looking up, it means that in search modes it might be difficult to keep the false alarm rate under control and in track mode removing it might not be enough to keep the track. Keep in mind that the radar of the F-18 in A/A is only using range ambiguous waveform so even if there is a tremendous amount of distance separation in the physical world, in the ambiguous domain, clutter can still be in the same range cell as the useful signal.

In DCS I'm under the impression that all radars deactivate the ground clutter filter when looking up since false alarm rate is not really represented anyway (except maybe in the M2000 after the recent upgrade) but is it really the case IRL ? (I don't really know though if that's public available knowledge, maybe it's part of ED generic radar behaviour because there is no better info available).

[Swift.]

People have been saying for a long time now that in general the notch in all DCS radars is too big